


Repentance

by synergenic (Losseflame)



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Athelstan exploring his sexuality, F/M, I tried to half-ass a plot in the beginning, M/M, and their sexual escapades, but then i just got to what this was really about and didn't stop, casually ignore any season two stuff released thus far, yeaaaah repressed bisexual subby monks with emotional issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 13:00:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Losseflame/pseuds/synergenic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lagertha never once flinches.  It’s what stands out as clear to Athelstan, in the blur after his fever abates enough for his hands to do good work, when they bury Gyda and when they bury Thyri and when Lagertha turns her focus to the wreckage that is what remains of Kattegat.  She never once flinches, her spine remains unbent, her eyes remain hard as iron.</p>
<p>Athelstan does not think he would have that strength.  He knows he would not have that strength.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repentance

Ragnar will stay gone throughout the winter. _Hardly surprising_ , Lagertha says, through clenched teeth and unshaking hands when the ice grows thick enough it’s clear he isn’t coming home this season, _I’m not expecting him until spring._

She never once flinches. It’s what stands out as clear to Athelstan, in the blur after his fever abates enough for his hands to do good work, when they bury Gyda and when they bury Thyri and when Lagertha turns her focus to the wreckage that is what remains of Kattegat. She never once flinches, her spine remains unbent, her eyes remain hard as iron.

Athelstan does not think he would have the strength – knows he does not have the strength – and so that is what remains clearest to him, and that is what he uses when the tired itching behind his eyes draws his thoughts from his work, to council himself back to steadfast hand and steady movement.

Not unlike, he thinks, how they in Lindisfarne were encouraged to mull over the greatness of Jesus Christ Our Lord and the Saints, think of their goodness compared to the wretchedness of their own souls. 

The smell of burning flesh – burning children, children that Athelstan could not help but grow to know and love, heathenism be damned – clings to him, he finds, to his hair and palms and clothes, clogging his nose as it wafts from his fingers when he eats. He doesn’t eat much, and sleeps less, his stomach in constant knots of guilt and something else and his mind sure as it always is that enough actions of penitence will grant him absolution, both with God and with himself. 

(He is not sure why he still seeks out God – it’s become more and more plain that God has forgotten Athelstan, now that he’s wandered so far from the rest of the flock – but seek Him out Athelstan does, as is habit.)

And Kattegat is not like Lindisfarne, there isn’t a man one can go to, to receive your punishment and the work that can be done to make up for your transgressions, but Athelstan has learned to become more resourceful than he was. He’s had to, and now it’s easy enough for the priest-slave to find work to fill his hands. Is even searched out, in the first few days of chaos, to have children thrust upon him or to be ushered towards pots or to have buckets of water and coarse brushes pushed into his hands.

He accepts it all and works like he hasn’t since Ragnar first took him to his family home, where he’d almost broken his back until Lagertha took him aside and made it clear that a dead slave was about as useful to her as an overworked one. There are times when his hands tremble, his eyes wander, his attention slips from the plague-stricken person at his knees to the smell of fresher air that breezes from outside the main hall. 

And then he remembers how Lagertha’s hands had not shook when she lit her daughter’s funeral pyre, and he feels the familiar bite of shame as he strengthens his shoulders and puts his mind back to his task. 

The task, as it stands now, being feeding the last half-inch of soup in the bowl he holds to the woman he tends.

A part of him feels guilty, sparing so much for one of the last victims, the ones that are simply being waited on the fade into death, but he remembers how warm soup has soothed his own throat, made rough with pain, and how a full belly made a peaceful sleep an easier task. So Athelstan clears his throat, blinking away the thick burn behind his eyelids that make him feel as if sand lines the flesh, and scrapes some liquid that has just begun to thicken into the spoon he holds, making sure to catch a softened chunk of potato in the wooden divot. 

“Come now, we’re almost done,” he murmurs, dropping the bowl beside the woman’s head and cupping her skull in his palm, tilting her head and touching the spoon to her lips. There is a snotty, curdled inhalation as she sucks the proffered food into her mouth, chewing with unclosed lips and swallowing thickly, painfully. “Good,” Athelstan says soothingly, speaking to her like she is one of the younger brothers at Lindisfarne, the ones that Athelstan always seemed to nurse through their first winter fevers. Grasping at the wineskin he keeps at his side, Athelstan uncaps it with his teeth and brings it to her lips next.

She sighs when she’s done drinking, and Athelstan smiles, feeling the skin of his lips break as he pushes some of her tangled blond hair from her face. She’s not old, the woman. Still in childbearing age, probably has children of her own to paw at her ankles and fist at her skirts.

Athelstan’s smile fades. If her children survived.

“Priest-slave,” a voice rumbles behind him, and though Athelstan is grateful for his newfound…well, _existence_ in the eyes of those around him, he can’t help but wish that they knew him by his name.

“Yes?” he asks. It comes out as a rusty, ugly rasp, and Athelstan clears his throat again, repeats his reply. 

“The Lady wants to see you,” a man Athelstan knows he recognizes says, beard doing little to hide the sickly gauntness of his face. 

Athelstan looks to the bowl. There are only a few more spoonfuls left, and his wineskin is also near empty. “A moment. Ask her for a moment. I’m almost done.”

The twisting, hysteric coil that has been sitting low in his gut since he awoke stirs at the mention of – of speaking to Lagertha, of seeing her face to face after – 

Athelstan shakes his head, swallowing not unlike the woman beside him as the coils expand, pushing on the walls of his stomach in a flurry of nauseous guilt. Abruptly, he feels pathetic, dressed in his thin linen shift and sprawled at the man’s feet with slumped shoulders, unable even to look him in the eye as he mumbles this response. He paws at the bowl, holds it out like an excuse as he shifts closer to the sickly woman.

She grips his arm and releases a pained groan, surprisingly clear eyes slitting open to latch onto Athelstan’s own and her hand tightening on the meat of his forearm. The man sees how this sickly woman clings to her nursemaid and relents, clearly having been about to press the issue. Nodding, he retreats, mumbling something about how he’ll return.

Athelstan sucks in a breath through his nose, though the slime that clogs it makes the action difficult. He scrapes some more soup into the spoon, holds up the woman’s head, presses the rim of the spoon to her lips.

They say nothing, but their eyes meet as Athelstan feeds her and he nods, thankful. She closes her eyes and raises one palm as if to dismiss it, slumping back with a tired sigh when the spoon is empty. 

“Almost done,” Athelstan says, and then the spoon and bowl alike are pushed from his hands. They clatter on the ground, the bowl tipping on its side and spilling the last of its contents in a small puddle. 

“Done,” Lagertha announces, eyes displeased slits and hands firm as they reach out and encircle Athelstan’s wrists, heaving him to his feet. He sways as the blood rushes from his head quickly, leaving black spots scuttling across his vision. Lagertha’s grip tightens further till Athelstan’s swaying ceases; then a hand easily becomes a manacle and she pulls him, wordless, from the main hall. The people part for Lagertha as she walks, and Athelstan tucks himself close to her side as they walk on instinct, now. 

The air outside is icier than the few slivers that reached Athelstan inside would make it seem, and he shivers, an itch of cold working its way down his spine and through his limbs. Lagertha cuts her breath off sharp in a vicious sigh, and Athelstan flinches, apology rising to his tongue as Lagertha’s shoulders roll, her hands moving to –

To slide the furs from her shoulders and toss them over his, hands quick and angry as they pin the cloak shut at Athelstan’s throat. 

The brooch is heavy, where it rests against his pulse, and cool.

Lagertha doesn’t speak again until they are in her rooms, where she twists one hand into her hair as she marches away from Athelstan.

Athelstan has seen this action, many times in the months he lived with the Lothbroks and bore witness to their matrimonial dissent. Once she is far enough away from him, she will plant one foot and use it as an anchor as she pivots to face him again, brows raised.

A breath sewn through teeth is growing in the air, emanating from his lady. One of her feet is set heavy upon the ground, a hand balled at her hip as she turns, expression wicked in its intensity. “ _Three times_ ,” she begins. It is a hiss.

Athelstan braces his shoulders, locking his eyes upon the ground as he waits to weather this storm. 

“Three _times_ I’ve summoned you, three times you’ve slunk away from my calls like a coward –” Lagertha makes a hard, disgruntled noise in her throat. “Athelstan, for the sake of the gods, _look at me_.” 

That’s an order, a true one; he recognizes it in the tone. Without express thought, his chin jerks upward, his eyes flashing to Lagertha’s as the coiled misery lashes out inside him, flaring lightning-bright and only fading when he lets himself be the coward she branded him as and looks to the ground again.

“Look at you,” Lagertha says disgustedly. “When did you last bathe, Athelstan? Or eat? Sleep?” She only pauses a moment before the words pour into the air, wrenching themselves from her lips in sudden bursts and gasps. “What would you have me become, priest? My village is broken, my daughter is gone and I _prayed_ for you, because Gyda wanted you to live and you–”

Now Athelstan does flinch, the sickened, heavy slick-black guilt surging up from between his hipbones to infect him further. _This_ is why he stayed away, this is why he couldn’t bear it because _knows_ , he knows what Lagertha did and what Gyda wanted and he may not keep faith in these Norse gods but he’d be fool enough now to deny their power –

“Please don’t say that, please don’t tell me what you did,” Athelstan gasps, stumbling back, the frenetic stretch-scratch of shame and something much darker making his instincts animal. 

“But I did! I prayed for you, I prayed for _Gyda_ , because –”

“I don’t _want_ to know that she wanted me to live!” Athelstan yells back, voice breaking, and he flushes hot at how childish, how whining, he sounds. His toes curl up and around each other inside the leather they’re bound in, and his breath sounds so loud in his ears. It catches, rough, in his throat, and he doubles over with the force of his coughs, his breath hacking cruelly at the insides of his lungs, still red-raw and aching in his chest.

“Priest,” Lagertha says, and she sounds so _tired_ as she grips his elbow and wrangles him into a chair at her table. “Whether you want to know or not, that is what she wanted. And she wouldn’t want you to die weeks after because you didn’t bother to rest.”

She finishes filling a plate. She drops it in front of Athelstan with a flat, expectant look. “When was the last time you ate?”

Swallowing becomes harder as his throat dries rapidly, and Athelstan is suddenly so _tired_. He sways, re-plants his feet, shrugs. 

Days, most likely. He goes days between eating now, needing to wait until his stomach is thrice-emptied and desperate for there to be room for food among the roils of contrition. The skin of his back is itchy with scabs, self-flagellation a form of repentance he’d never understood the liberating appeal of until he’d left the land where it would be seen as a norm. His hands are bony, his shoulders thin.

He shrugs again. 

Both of his hands are taken by both of hers and he tries so desperately to avoid Lagertha’s eyes but she angles herself so that they are unavoidable, crouching at Athelstan’s knees in a way that makes him horrifically uncomfortable, too away of their stations in relation to one another and even moreso aware of the innate appeal there is to be found at looking at a woman crouched at your knees.

(He misses Thyri desperately.) 

“Athelstan,” Lagertha begins, perhaps the most punishing part of this ordeal thus far being the gentleness in her tone, the _kindness_. The anger that fuelled her only minutes ago when this conversation began is gone, and Athelstan aches for it. “Athelstan, what would you make me to my husband? What would Ragnar do when he returned, if I lost Gyda and saved you, only to lose you later?” 

_Likely nothing_ , Athelstan thinks mulishly; for all that Lagertha seems sure of Ragnar’s remaining goodwill toward him, Athelstan has not forgotten – cannot forget – Uppsala. What Ragnar intended for him there.

He doesn’t think his life is nearly as interesting as a trinket to Ragnar as it once was, anymore, and thinks Lagertha’s argument is spineless therefore because of it, but –

Lagertha’s eyes are pleading where they meet his, and that unsettles Athelstan, makes him reach for bread and shove it into his mouth without tasting it just to have the beseeching look in Lagertha’s eyes change to solid approval. 

A pleading light has never been suited to Lagertha’s eyes, he doesn’t think, and he doesn’t think he deserves to be the cause of it.

“You won’t go so long without eating again,” Lagertha says once Athelstan has eaten his fill – past it, for when he pushed the plate away half-empty Lagertha had wordlessly pushed it back to him, and would only concede defeat when Athelstan gagged over a bite of salted meat. These words are not a request, and Athelstan feels them belly-deep, how they settle there with a jerk. 

“Of course, Lady Lagertha,” he replies, and her lips thin as she looks at him.

“And you’ll sleep here again, as you did before.” 

They both flinch at that word, ‘before’, and all that it implies, but Athelstan nods. Sits with his hands in his lap and his eyes on his hands and waits to see if Lagertha will say anymore.

There’s a few seconds of silence, before Lagertha nods stiffly, the movement visible from the corner of his eye, and rests her hand on his shoulder. “Go to sleep, Athelstan.” 

He nods, reaches for the plates to do his duty first and she grips his wrists, shakes her head. “No, Athelstan. Go to sleep.” 

Stumbling to his curtained corner – chosen close to Lagertha and Ragnar’s bed, just as it was on the farm though they had so much space here and Athelstan half-thinks it was Ragnar’s design, to make it easier to meet Athelstan’s paralyzed gaze as he fucked into his wife, just as he did on the farm – Athelstan crumples to his knees at the furs he hasn’t slept on in weeks, slumping forward and it’s only when he is half-asleep that he remembers he still wears Lagertha’s cloak around his shoulders.

He groans, fumbling with the clasp at his throat and is soothed again by Lagertha’s gentle touch upon his hands. “It’s alright, Athelstan. Go to sleep.”

And it seems repetition is key; after the third time he heard those words in her voice, Athelstan obeys. 

… 

It doesn’t get any easier, after that, to keep living, but he does it now with the knowledge that Lagertha expects it of him, _needs_ it of him. He opens his mouth and eats tasteless food and drinks water that doesn’t parch his thirst, rhythmically and patterned like the fabric Lagertha keeps teaching him to weave as they both ignore that she was teaching two months previously. It becomes – if not _easy_ , then simple, to sleep, wake, work, eat drink survive as winter rolls slow and white through the land.

He had thought he’d known cold, on Lindisfarne, when the air would pinch skin and the ground would go hard under a light dusting of frost, and he was in no way prepared for what lay outside for him when Siggy announced come morning that the first storm of the year had been and gone as they slept. Opening the door, he yelps as snow skitters inside on a gust of wind, gazing outside at all the _white_ , more snow than he’d ever seen in his _life_ –

“You look like an inlander seeing the ocean for the first time,” Lagertha says, quiet as she walks up beside him. He doesn’t stiffen as she gets closer – the coming of cold had also eroded away at his sense of modesty, the only possible way to sleep comfortably warm throughout the night being to pile with Lagertha and Siggy on Lagertha’s spacious bed – instead shifting so that she may stand more fully beside him in the doorway. She pulls the furs she has around her shoulders tighter. “This is only the first storm, priest. Imagine the snow up to the roofs. Imagine being in these rooms for weeks because we can’t make our way through the doors.” 

He thinks about this, and then promptly wishes that he doesn’t – he’s – well – he’s become accustomed to living side-by-side two women, and he knows that Lagertha must be lonely, with Ragnar away – but –

Athelstan locks up as he remembers waking up to see Lagertha on the other side of the bed, hand moving firmly between spread thighs and head tossed back, nearly soundless breaths hitching in her throat. 

“Priest?” Lagertha asks, concerned now. He knows this tone, knows it to be the one she would take on when Athelstan still would not eat daily, when she realized she could not remember the last time she saw food pass his lips. 

Shaking his head, Athelstan forces his lips into a smile. “Nothing, Lady Lagertha –” he starts, and his tone is so painfully false that he winces internally.

Siggy breezes up behind them, pushing the door that remained open closed with a _thump_. “You _know_ , Lagertha, he’s simply worried about how he’ll find the space to take care of himself. He hasn’t realized we wouldn’t mind seeing.” 

She smiles genteelly at him from behind Lagertha’s head, like she knows both what her words have saved him from and what they’ve done to him. Athelstan coughs, chokes on air and now Lagertha and Siggy are both smiling at him, the same smile Athelstan has learned to _loathe_ , how it screams how precious and strange they find him and his Christian values.

Those values have been strained and warped and stained, but they remain, to the growing amusement of many in Kattegat. 

They know him as more than priest-slave, most of them, now, because Athelstan has become a regular sight at Lagertha’s side as she walks through the village, organizing and speaking to the remaining families, because some who survived the sickness remember his face from when he soothed them and welcome him to their homes, because Lagertha is giving him more and more duties that spread beyond those of house-slave. It brings back the slippery, unsure question he tried to stop himself from wrestling with, his duties and how he’s being treated in Kattegat, and most days Athelstan presses it down, swallows it back, remembering how its taste bittered quickly when last he spoke it.

That doesn’t stop him from thinking it, sometimes, when he eats with Lagertha as her equal, when she offhandedly reminds him to bring this root to that family for the pregnant wife, to remind this man to see her tomorrow lest she cut his balls from his body. 

There are some at home – and is it still home? – that would spite him for taking a woman’s dominance so easily, but Athelstan finds Lagertha suited for this sort of leadership, perhaps moreso than Father Cuthbert at Lindisfarne ever was. And Athelstan was never made for more than servitude, he doesn’t think, and even if God displaced him from one place his skill may go to use Athelstan was delivered swiftly to another.

That is message enough from him, even if it seems this message is the last he was given before the slow-creeping sense of abandonment that sits on his shoulders appeared. 

“Athelstan?” Lagertha asks, drawing him out of his thoughts.

“Yes?” He sounds blank. Lagertha lifts the bundle she is holding, again, if the expression upon her features is to go by.

“Take this to Skuld, the woman with the burn in her chest brought on –”

“By the child she bears, of course,” Athelstan finishes, stepping forward and grasping the bundle, covered in coarse linen that scrapes the rawness of his knuckles. 

“You’re well, Athelstan?” Lagertha asks, gripping his chin and tilting it so that his eyes must meet hers. 

Athelstan is frozen as his thoughts churn thickly, trying to find words to soothe her that are not also lies. “I – my dreams were strange, last night.”

Strange in that they were filled with flesh on flesh that _yearned_ , strange in that they were filled with snatches of blond hair and the vague memory of muscle-heat clamped around his fingers.

Strange in that they weren’t particularly strange to him at all, anymore, and this seems to be answer enough for Lagertha, who nods before teaching him what clothes he must wear now. 

…

Skuld takes the bundle from him with a warm, slow-spreading smile, tugging him inside her home with a gently insistent hand on his elbow. The child makes no more than a quarter moon swell between her hips, and her blond hair smells of dried herbs. He catches the scent as she moves beside him, short enough that her head fits neatly under his nose and slight enough that he’d likely be able to hold her, utterly and completely still, if he should try. 

She is beautiful, and Athelstan is suddenly, uncomfortably aware of this fact as he watches her settle herself in front of a pot, unwrapping one of the roots Lagertha had him ferry over.

“She, ah, she said that a finger’s length boiled into a tea would –”

“So you know of remedies, then, priest?” The wholly male, rumbling tone of this voice puts a shiver in Athelstan’s spine, moreso the _name_ it so casually used, and Athelstan shifts to look at where Skuld’s husband stands behind him.

“Koli, he started with how it’s the _lady’s_ instructions,” Skuld starts with a laugh, and Koli’s massive shoulders shake as he limps to the door, pushing it closed again where it had blown ajar. His knee had been wounded, Athelstan knows, when Ragnar left, which is why he’s here at all.

Athelstan wonders why he’s examining Koli’s knees so intently, and he swallows, turning his eyes back to where Skuld is cutting the roots into usable chunks.

“Join us for dinner,” Koli says, and Athelstan keeps himself from jumping at how close the man’s voice is to his. “As thanks.”

“Thanks isn’t –”

Koli holds up one hand, eyes intent on Athelstan’s figure and – 

Athelstan is breathless and feels something questioning tremble under his ribcage and he is not unaware of himself, not how Ragnar accused him of being in one of the last arguments they had before Ragnar lost interest entirely. But he was taught that this – this was _wrong_ , how he felt when he saw broad shoulders tense and heave under weight, how Athelstan saw how men would tug and grope and push themselves onto women and how he couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like if he were the one being pushed, how it would feel to push _back_ –

“Alright.” Athelstan changes his answer midway through saying his first, and Koli _grins_ , sharp-edged and hungry and if Athelstan didn’t know that he and Skuld carried unspoken intentions already he would know now, with how that smile sparks along his nerves. Something flares in Athelstan’s stomach – he’d learned how his people had been wrong in some of their teachings, here, saw it tangible and real in the lives lead. 

And he remembers Ragnar and Lagertha’s offer, how if in this moment he could choose again he would go with them, damn his robes and the vows that started choking him months ago. 

He remembers Thyri. 

 

Athelstan smiles back, unsure of what he’s going to do now that he’s made the decision to do _something_ , and Koli steps forward, grin inching up as he clasps Athelstan’s jaw.

“Skuld,” Koli calls out warningly, before his lips are on Athelstan’s and Athelstan is set _ablaze_. 

He gasps, unsure of what to do with his hands or where to put his eyes and made raw by the feel of Koli working his mouth slowly against Athelstan’s, fitting Athelstan’s bottom lip between his teeth and suckling, and Athelstan keens into his mouth. Koli laughs, and Athelstan can feel that laugh up his jaw, in his cock where it’s pressed unceremoniously against Koli’s thigh by one broad hand on the small of his back.

“Come on, priest,” Koli says into his ear, nipping at the shell and encouraging Athelstan to roll his hips with broad hands on his waist, grinding against Koli’s thigh like a dog in heat and –

“Oh, _Christ_ ,” Athelstan cries, soft into the crook of Koli’s neck and the blaspheme feels dangerous on his tongue, all sharp edged and venom and he shivers, presses his lips curiously to the skin of Koli’s neck.

The man makes an approving sound, pushing and tugging at Athelstan with his fumbling feet until he pushes Athelstan down, one hand on Athelstan’s shoulder. Athelstan sits wordlessly, eager to follow instruction – Skuld laughs, pressing herself up behind Athelstan and murmuring into his ear.

“Do you like it when my husband takes care with you?” She puts soft, promising emphasis on ‘takes care’, sliding small, beautiful hands across the expanse of Athelstan’s stomach and edging near the bulge of his cock. Sighing, Athelstan presses back against the curves of her, remembering suddenly all that he liked about Thyri – it seemed so easy to forget, when Koli and the sweat-sex smell of him was close. 

“Yes,” he breathes, struggling to turn to face her until Koli uses his big hands to lift and push Athelstan. Then he unceremoniously tucks his face into her neck, nipping kisses along the soft curve of it and she _laughs_ , tilting her head back entirely to give him more room.

“You’re better than we expected,” she says delightedly, “we thought we’d be teaching you _everything_.” She sighs when Athelstan places his palm on the inside of her thigh, when he slides his hand up till it rests at the apex between hip and thigh. 

“You’d still,” he fumbles his way around the words when Koli fits his hand over the curve of Athelstan’s cock and squeezes, “ _ah_ , you’re still going to be teaching me –”

He gives up on speaking to spread his fingers over the wet heat of her, not – not _pleasing_ , but just…touching. Spreads his fingers so they catch on soft lips, get just a little slick on the tips and he never actually _managed_ last he had the chance so he pulls his hand out from under her skirt and brings it to his lips, tasting the clear fluid curiously.

It’s…salty, he decides, tastes simply like how the musk of her smells, but he thinks he likes it.

Koli makes a short, hard sound behind him, and that’s all the warning he gets before Athelstan is tackled from the side, pushed down to the ground away from Skuld and Athelstan half-thinks he miss-stepped until he hears Koli’s _groan_.

“Want something in your mouth, priest?” he snarls, before his lips are on Athelstan’s in something that feels less like a kiss and more like _hunger_ , like Koli is trying to eat him alive and lick away his voice all at once. The warrior’s weight is hot and heavy where it’s pressing against Athelstan’s, and when Koli moves away from Athelstan’s lips to start working his neck over with tongue and teeth Athelstan _moans_.

“Yes,” he says shortly, and then licks his lips, thinks closer on what he can feel pressed up where his right hip meets his stomach. Wriggling, he arches so that he ruts against it, watches how Koli’s eyes cloud, go more and more mindless before him.

It feels powerful, Athelstan thinks.

Skuld presses closer when Koli leans back with a groan, kissing Athelstan as her husband tears his shirt from his body and shoves his pants partway down his thighs. Athelstan is the one who makes a soft noise into the kiss, when he sees Koli’s cock against his thigh, thick and ruddy. Some precome drools from head, beading on top of the foreskin, and Koli works his fist over the length, revealing the blunt, fat reddened crown of his cock.

Skuld _purrs_ into Athelstan’s ear, rutting against his thigh shamelessly and Athelstan slips a hand under her skirts to feel how she flutters and clenches on his fingertips, passes his fingers over the hard nub that precursors her cunt and presses _down_ , rubbing and listening to her keen. 

“Feel no obligation, priest, I’ll do it if you want it no longer,” Skuld says, and while her voice may be pitched into something slow-drawn with lust the offer is true, her eyes sombre as she meets his. 

They won’t force him, and Athelstan… _knows_ , somehow, that he could push both of them off and make for the door and neither would stop him. 

It makes him want more, he thinks, and Athelstan circles the bundle of nerves at her cunt with a calloused thumb once more before he rises to his knees, hands falling on Koli’s shoulders. Koli grins at him, kissing Athelstan and nipping at his lips, his nose, his cheeks, until Athelstan laughs and pushes his face back, spreading his fingers along Koli’s chest. That is all Koli needs to tip himself backward, falling onto his back and looking at Athelstan perched above him, a leg on either side of his stomach.

“You can instruct me,” Athelstan starts, already quiet with the satisfaction of new discovery, spreading his palms over Koli’s chest and pinching a nipple curiously.

Koli hums, his only comment, and watches with eyes that make Athelstan shiver, that make him realize who Koli reminds him of and makes him wonder if he cares, if he’s willing still when he knows – 

He breathes in, eye-level with Koli’s navel and the head of Koli’s cock bumping under his chin, catching sticky-wet on the skin of his neck. Athelstan can _smell_ him, and he is used to the scent of maleness, having lived in close quarters with many for quite some time but there is something _different_ , here, something hotter and more feral underlying the scent and it makes Athelstan’s gut clench on desire, his mouth water some. “Oh,” he mouths, fitting his hand around the length.

He’s not entirely without an idea, having tried this once or twice after – 

After Thyri, and he is quick to push those thoughts from his mind as he leans back to watch his hands work over Koli’s cock. Koli moans, throwing his head back.

“Tighter, priest, make your hands tighter,” and Athelstan’s hips _twitch_ at how that isn’t – that’s an _order_ Koli gave and Athelstan bites his lip as he obeys. “Play with the head, priest,” Koli says next, and Athelstan does, breath catching as he _feels_ precome pearl from the slit on Koli’s cock, the foreskin catching round the tip of one of his fingers. Athelstan can’t stop shivering, now, his own cock heavy and almost hurting between his legs and heat that clenches, liquid and volatile, between his hips. 

“Taste it, priest,” Koli snarls, one hand reaching to hold his cock like it’s an _offering_ and Athelstan moans as he bows his back, braces his hands on Koli’s hips to lap at the head of his cock. Koli _heaves_ in a breath and the hand Athelstan cannot remembering Koli tangling in his hair tightens, Koli’s muscles locking like –

Like he was trying not to simply push Athelstan down, force his mouth on the length and Athelstan presses his thighs together at how the heat becomes more fluid at that idea, leaking into his limbs and coiling dizzily up through his abdomen. 

Athelstan isn’t sure that – that he wouldn’t mind being forced, and he tries to find a way to say this without saying this, loosening his jaw and pressing more of the hot, heavy weight of Koli’s cock into his mouth. 

“Here, priest,” Skuld says, giggling, and from behind she puts a small hand on the back of Athelstan’s head, pushing.

“Skuld!” Koli gasps out sharply, grasping at Athelstan’s shoulders and stilling his movements. Athelstan moans, and Koli stops, looking down between his thighs with a questioning, wondering look. 

“He _wants_ it, Koli,” Skuld says simply, and then Koli is heaving out a groan, kissing his wife hard before he pushes her away, clearly dismissive as he re-anchors his grip in Athelstan’s hair and _jerks_ , possessively. 

Athelstan _moans_ , moans louder when he feels Skuld slink her hands between his thighs. 

…

“Well,” Koli’s voice is loud as he slips beside where Athelstan and Skuld are twined together. They both groan, pitch harmonious in its disharmony, and Koli, unbothered, fits himself against Athelstan’s back again. “Another storm rolled in, a real one this time.”

Skuld makes a noise like a dying cow. A questioning one.

Koli laughs, bites Athelstan’s shoulder and Athelstan groans as it makes parts of him stir when all of him wants to be sleeping. “Looks like you’ll be here for another little bit, priest.”

“How terrible,” Athelstan slurs out, and is thankful when Koli doesn’t say anymore, just presses himself closer. 

…

In the end, Athelstan is with Skuld and Koli for three weeks as they wait for the snow to abate enough for him to leave. It’s true that several times the snowfall thins enough that Athelstan could fight his way through it, and true enough that they’d seen glimpses of several figures doing just that when they bothered catching glimpses of outside at all, but.

In the end, Athelstan is with Skuld and Koli for three weeks and even then when he leaves it’s with Skuld pressing a jar of clear oil into his palms and an invitation to come back when he’s…figured his way around it, and Athelstan blushes even as he says he will. 

She laughs, and he tastes them both every time he swallows when he walks back to where Lagertha will no doubt have questions. He has to muscle the door open, and as he enters, he cocks his head, unsure as to why something in the air strikes him as off but unwilling to deny the stirring in his gut.

“Lady Lagertha? I – the storm, it –” he begins, walking forward to crest the curve that would bring him to the open space next to the table. 

He stops. Ragnar sits at that table, Ragnar with Bjorn on one side and Athelstan feels his heart _twist_ , Bjorn has grown so –

“That’s alright, Athelstan,” Lagertha says, rising from where she sits on Ragnar’s other side and it’s so strange to see her anywhere but the head of the table. “Were you well?”

There is a flat note in her voice, hurt so far beyond hurt it’s fallen to numbness, and Athelstan catches, stutters, looks again at the scene the remainder of the Lothbrok family makes.

It isn’t the first meal Ragnar has been back, it can’t be, and Athelstan feels like cursing himself as he thinks of how he’d chosen to stay coddled between Skuld and Koli, when – when Ragnar was here, sitting at the table and looking down at his meal and – 

Looking down at his meal. He hasn’t even looked _up_ , not even close to looking _at_ Athelstan and he’s not sure what he was expecting when Ragnar returned, but it was _something_. He locks eyes with Lagertha, scours them with his own. Her lips are pressed together and she shakes her head.

_Later_. He is to know, then, the unspoken thing tangled between the Lothbroks, he is to be told, he won’t be cut away 

Lagertha touches careful fingers to the inside of his wrist, and Athelstan watches her wrestle back whatever hurt she is struggling with to step closer to him, reassuring in her silence, in her presence. Athelstan feels himself relax, slightly – surely if Lagertha can find some ease, so can he. 

“I heard you survived what killed my sister, priest,” Bjorn speaks up, suddenly, and it’s been _months_ but the snappish, childishly aggressive way Bjorn throws the words at Athelstan’s face is familiar enough to make Athelstan’s eyes sting. 

As is the roar of rekindled guilt in his gut, and Athelstan cuts his eyes to the ground. Beside him, he can hear Lagertha huff out a breath through her nose. 

“I’m truly sorry, Bjorn, were there any way for me to –” 

“I didn’t say you need to be,” Bjorn cuts him off, obnoxious as he always is but Athelstan catches a tremble there. Bjorn grits his teeth, fists his hands, and his glance at Athelstan is hard before he fixes his stony gaze back onto the table. “I didn’t say you needed to be sorry –" 

And then Bjorn clenches his jaw, hard, as his voice breaks, scraping his knuckles over his eyes and looking determinedly away from Athelstan and Athelstan feels his heart swell with love for this damnable child. 

“Oh, Bjorn,” he says, softening as his vision tunnels. Everything but the shaking of Bjorn’s shoulders becomes inconsequential, even Ragnar’s steady silence, even the unknown cause of Lagertha’s hurt. “Oh, Bjorn,” he repeats, sitting down beside the boy and curling his arms around Bjorn’s shoulders. 

Then the breath in Bjorn’s chest catches, tears, and Athelstan has his arms full of sobbing thirteen-year-old boy, a snotty nose dribbling on Athelstan from how Bjorn’s face is tucked into the crook of his neck and awkward knees and elbows jammed into the softer spots of Athelstan’s person. 

The juddered vocalizations, Athelstan eventually realizes, are words, and as he strokes Bjorn’s hair with one hand, he detaches himself just slightly, just enough to lean back to better hear Bjorn speak. 

“…and it just smelled like _meat_ , like a sheep but it wasn’t and I – I –” he gasps against Athelstan, Athelstan quick to start soothing, nonsense murmurs. “I thought it would be different.” 

These words get pitched into a whimper, and Athelstan figures all children, regardless of the gods they grew up calling their own, have similar first reactions. 

“You were so strong,” he says, and Bjorn whines, curling closer into him so Athelstan speaks louder, doing his best to rock them back and forth. “Bjorn, you did so well, as well as you could, and you were so strong.” 

He keeps talking, keeps telling Bjorn how strong he was and how well he did and wondering when he became so at ease at the idea of comforting a child killer, at soothing this child killer’s fear when he starts to feel monstrous. 

Over the crown of Bjorn’s head, he meets Ragnar’s eyes as Ragnar watches him comfort Bjorn. “It’s alright now, Bjorn, you’re home,” he says absentmindedly, because Ragnar’s eyes are as blue as they were before, which – which of course they would be but this seems like an important fact, one that stands out in Athelstan’s mind. 

He has been staring at Ragnar for too long now, too long without saying anything but Athelstan is at a loss as to what to _say_

“Priest,” Ragnar says, nodding, and oh, his voice is tired. 

“Ragnar,” Athelstan responds, and he could ask, he supposes, ask about whatever it is that sits in the air like corpse rot, but Ragnar’s eyes darken like he can read that thought in Athelstan’s face. 

Athelstan quickly looks down, and when next he swallows he can taste Koli in his mouth again. 

… 

“You weren’t afraid of me when I left.” 

Athelstan jumps when he hears Ragnar’s voice coming towards his sheltered corner, scrambling to fit the lid on the jar of oil and pull his pants back up his hips with his cheeks burning and his words must come out contradictory to his appearance when he spits “I’m not afraid of you now.” 

Ragnar raises a brow, looking down at Athelstan and twisting his lips in mirth when Athelstan continues to fumble, shoving the jar under the pile of furs and hoping that Ragnar doesn’t notice the smell or – 

Or _Athelstan_ , and even as he thinks this Ragnar’s eyes quirk to Athelstan’s lap and his smirk grows. “You _have_ changed. Lagertha said, but…” he shrugs. “I don’t like thinking that you can change without me there to change you.” 

This is unsettlingly, uncharacteristically honest, and his surprise must show on his face, for Ragnar huffs out a laugh, bending his large body into Athelstan’s corner as if his own _bed_ is not steps from Athelstan’s space but Athelstan is helpless to the intrusion, only makes room for it as Ragnar settles himself beside him. 

Athelstan is still amazingly hard, and Ragnar either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care as he swings an arm around Athelstan’s shoulders. 

“I didn’t mean to send you back here,” he begins, breath sour with a hint of a slur. “It’s still cold, priest, and the bed is big.” 

“Are you _drunk_?” Athelstan asks, incredulous. 

“’Are you _drunk_?’” Ragnar mimics him, voice arching much higher than Athelstan’s did. “ _Yes_ , priest. Why? Can I not drink in my own home?” 

Now he’s getting aggressive, loud, and Athelstan hushes him, aware of how late it is even if he is not. “Of course you can, who’s to stop you?” 

“Lagertha,” Ragnar answers, and his voice is oddly obstinate. “I’d stop if she asked it of me.” 

And Athelstan…has spent months with Lagertha, when Ragnar wasn’t there, has known her without the distraction her husband provides, and these words make his jaw clench as he remembers conversations that trailed through night to morning again. “She has asked many things of you.” 

Ragnar freezes beside Athelstan, expression going ugly as he looks at him and Athelstan holds his ground, keeps his eyes on Ragnar because he finds it so much easier to fight for Lagertha than it is for himself. Then Ragnar barks out a laugh. “You’re right, priest; she has asked many things of me.” 

They sit in silence for a measure of time, until Ragnar snorts and tightens his arm on Athelstan. Athelstan holds his breath as this brings him closer to Ragnar’s bulk, the heat and smell of him, half-despising again what he did with Koli, how easy it is to remember when Ragnar is this close. 

When Ragnar is this close and he’s still hard and he’s still fluttering from the finger he’d managed to ease inside himself, clenching down on nothing and feeling oddly empty for it. 

“Has Lagertha not told you of my newest failing as a husband? Have you two not…” he waves his hands, “ _Twittered_ on about that to each other yet?” 

“No, Ragnar, we have not. I think you should sleep this –” 

“I was to have another son.” Ragnar interrupts, ignoring Athelstan quite thoroughly as he looks emptily at the space in front of him. “By another woman. That’s what I did.” 

And Athelstan – Athelstan can’t _speak_ for a moment at the horrific, stupid sense of betrayal he feels at those words – this is not his _family_ , he may be many things to them but he is always clear with himself when he thinks that this is not his _family_ but he feels those words as if he is, as he has no right to – and Ragnar glances at his face before he laughs. 

“And if _you_ , priest, a wombless man, can feel as you feel, how do you think she felt?” Ragnar pauses, laughs again. “Feels.” 

“Where,” Athelstan stops, wets his lips, “where’s your son now?” 

Ragnar shrugged. “Never born. I killed the woman before it came out.” 

He says those words, viciously casual, and there is a world behind that phrase, an entire story Athelstan will never grasp tucked away inside Ragnar’s mind and keeping him from – 

Athelstan shakes his head sharply. 

“So what are you going to do, Ragnar?” he asks, and Ragnar looks at him sharply, as if this is a game Athelstan has begun to play. “Are you going to make yourself worthy of her again?” 

The question makes Ragnar freeze, like Athelstan struck him, and Athelstan freezes in response, warily realizing he doesn’t think he can predict what Ragnar will do at any given provocation anymore. 

“Rag –” he starts, sure he’s crossed a line but he’s cut off as Ragnar leans forward and _jams_ their lips together, gracelessly, drunkenly, holding Athelstan’s jaw in one hand as he mouths over Athelstan’s lips. 

Athelstan shivers, half-mast cock suddenly awake and aware of the proceedings as Ragnar leans into him, _forcing_ his head back and Athelstan can’t stop his _moan_ – 

He feels a palm over his mouth, trapping the sound between his lips as Ragnar frowns at him like he’s the one causing the most noise, rather than the drunken fool. 

“You ask good questions, priest,” and then he’s unfolding himself and walking away and Athelstan is left gasping, hopelessly hard and confused and when he tosses himself back, determined to make something in this evening go as predicted, he bites out a curse, spreading his hand more fully under the covers and snarling when he realizes that – 

Ragnar has taken the jar of oil. 

… 

The next day, Athelstan flushes when he sees the jar tucked innocuously among the furs on Lagertha and Ragnar’s bed, and he – he pauses for a moment, glances about the space to see that everyone is engaged in other activities before clambering up on the bed he was sleeping upon nightly that yet still manages to feel like a stranger’s. 

Things are different, now that Ragnar sleeps here as well. Something that Athelstan becomes too aware of as he reaches for the jar, the spread of furs beneath him smelling just different enough, sharp enough in their musk that Athelstan knows it’s not just Lagertha’s sweat and skin and sleep he’s smelling. 

That should not put a clench of heat in Athelstan’s gut. It puts a very firm, very present throb of lust between his hips anyway, and Athelstan’s fingers scramble to reach the damn jar – 

Ragnar is stretching out above him, and Athelstan can feel Ragnar’s heat along his back as Ragnar’s fingers nudge the jar just of Athelstan’s reach. 

“It’s still cold, priest, and Lagertha and I wouldn’t mind,” he says, and it would be easier if Ragnar turned this into one of his over-done pantomimes of seduction, rolling the words heady with unspoken suggestion but he just…says them. Like it’s the truth and the truth is that easy, that Ragnar and Lagertha wouldn’t mind Athelstan – Athelstan exploring himself in the bed they sleep on while they sleep next to him and – 

Athelstan curls in on himself, which just makes their positioning more awkward for how it brings his hips closer to Ragnar’s, his ass closer to the curve of Ragnar’s cock and Athelstan scrambles forward when the two brush, Ragnar soft against him but Athelstan familiar enough now to know what it would feel like if he wasn’t. 

He makes a warbling, pathetic noise as he just gives up and loosens the muscles in his arms, slumping forward and burying his face into the furs and regretting that immediately when the smell of Ragnar’s body makes him hard again. 

Ragnar laughs, and – and strikes Athelstan’s ass once, lightly, before he pushes himself off the bed and that. 

That doesn’t help at all. 

… 

Ragnar and Lagertha are twined together, closer than newlyweds when they sleep and were it even a week ago that would make Athelstan bright with joy but it isn’t a week ago and Ragnar has been _trying_ , Ragnar has been trying so desperately that it’s no surprise Lagertha allowed him close enough to hold her as she sleeps. 

Athelstan shifts, watches how it makes Lagertha sigh and mutter before falling silent again, feeling his cock catch heavy on the covers on top of him and feeling the jar of oil by his head under the pillows and wishing that Ragnar has just let the cold go and left Athelstan to his corner. 

Then Ragnar grunts, rolling on top of Athelstan. Athelstan wheezes, and punches Ragnar in the side – he stopped thinking anything of striking Ragnar at around the third night – heaving in a relieved breath when Ragnar grunts, again, and rolls his way off of Athelstan to crush his wife instead. 

Lagertha, amazingly, only mutters again as one arm flops out in her sleep and Ragnar curls himself like vines around her body. 

Athelstan bites his lip, debating still even as one hand trails across his stomach, the other fitting under his pillow and grasping for the jar. He sighs as he curls his fingers around his cock, pulling back the foreskin and rubbing rough fingers on the head, just enough to make him bite back a moan, enough for the pleasure to go sharp. He cups his balls, still acclimatizing to the weight and feel of them in his hand, still getting used to claiming his cock and balls as body parts he…claims, uses, accepts beyond their utilitarian purpose. 

And then, one hand fisting his cock, he trails a curious finger over his ass, catches the rim and inhales the keen that threatens to burst from his lips as he turns his head to the side. Ragnar and Lagertha lie with their eyes closed, their bodies still. 

Good. 

He exhales, opening the jar and slicking his fingers in oil and circling those fingers over his ass again, one finger starting to stroke at the edges, work its way inside. Sighing as the first knuckle slips inside, Athelstan arches his back some, planting his feet on the bed and spreading his thighs for better access and he has to cut off a whimper when that makes it almost too easy to press the rest of his finger inside. 

This is the furthest he’s got in these explorations, encouraged by some of Koli’s filthier promises and a clearer explanation on Skuld’s part, and it’s strange, an internal heat and pressure when he’s used to feeling pleasure from the outside in, and Athelstan crooks a finger curiously, remembering the part that Koli and Skuld had repeated to him insistently. 

Press up towards his stomach… Athelstan pulls his finger out and presses it back in, shocked at the sound and the _feel_ , a slow drag along his insides that puts an entirely different sort of pleasure between his hips. “Oh,” he moans, twisting on his side to bite at whatever he can find beneath his teeth. 

He’s not sure what they’re talking about, about what to find near his stomach until he has two fingers inside of himself and he suddenly _is_ , lightning-bright aware and every nerve he has feels like it’s on _fire_. He _gasps_ , knows it’s too loud but he can’t care, not when his hips are grinding against his hand desperately and he’s adjusting how his legs are splayed restlessly, moving his fingers out and in and around because he can’t find that spot, can’t find that angle and he’s _desperate_ – 

“Oh, God, oh please Christ please I,” and he’s _babbling_ , he shouldn’t be babbling but he’s found it again, and Athelstan rubs at the small bump up towards his stomach and feels stars burst and swim in his veins. He tosses his head from side to side, muscles twitching and lost to the pleasure and – 

No one had _told_ him. He would have never become a monk, Athelstan thinks wildly as he turns onto his stomach so that he may rut up against the furs, not if anyone had _told_ him about this. 

“Ah,” he hears, realizes distantly that it’s his voice, gone thready and mewlish and he’d feel shame if he didn’t think shame would make his blood hotter, somehow. “Ah, ah, _ah_ –" 

Athelstan chokes when Ragnar shifts, when Ragnar shifts and Ragnar is _awake_ , Ragnar and Lagertha are both _awake_ and _looking right at him_ and Athelstan freezes, his fingers half inside of himself as he looks at them, braced by his knees and shoulders and wondering how _long_ they’ve been awake – 

“Don’t stop,” Ragnar says hoarsely, and the reason he shifted was to be able to grip his cock better, his fist working over the length and his eyes on Athelstan. 

Athelstan breathes, hitches when he pushes his fingers inside and watches how Ragnar watches him. 

Ragnar’s cock is as impressive as the man, thick and red and long and Athelstan’s jaw _aches_ as he looks at it, as he imagines what it would feel like stretching his mouth open. “I know how to suck that,” he murmurs, mindless but wanting. 

Ragnar snarls even as his hand speeds up. “I’ll kill the fuck that taught you, you – you won’t fuck any man but me, do you hear me, priest? _I_ found you, _I_ keep you –” 

Athelstan keens, widening his stance and trying to work in a third finger, stretching till it feels like he’ll break, and he catches a glimpse of Lagertha behind Ragnar, sees how dark her eyes are. 

“Were you taught how to give pleasure to a woman, too?” 

And oh, _God_ , her tone is dark, possessive, enough to make Athelstan shiver. He nods, into the furs, listens to her hiss. 

“ _Skuld_. Skuld and her damn whore husband – you were there for weeks!” 

Ragnar yelps as he’s shunted to the side, Lagertha crawling closer to Athelstan and gripping his hand, pulling it away and leaving him empty and twitching. He tosses his head back, makes a pleading noise and rocks his hips. 

Ragnar’s hands are hot as they encircle them, hot and one of them is damp from his cock, from how much he wanted Athelstan – Athelstan moans, hitching his hips higher in clear invitation. 

“Ragnar,” Lagertha intones, and the heat Athelstan could feel nearing him is gone and he keens his loss. She twines her fingers around his hair, yanks _hard_ and Athelstan doesn’t think he can arch his back much more but his body tries, twisting on itself and writhing at the pain-pleasure. 

“Lagertha,” Athelstan huffs, pleads. 

“Did you let Koli take you? Did you give him your ass so _easily_?” She lets her words drift across the shell of his ear, and her fingers are shaking as they touch his jaw. “ _I_ could have been doing this for you weeks ago." 

“I didn’t know,” Athelstan pleads, unable to answer the question as he searches out her fingertips with his lips. 

Lagertha snorts. “And that, priest, is why you’re a fool.” 

She moves him so that he is on his back, Ragnar between his legs and Lagertha straddling his chest, looking the leader that she is as she looks down at him, occasionally grinding her cunt on his skin to watch how it makes him want her. Then she leans back, grasping at the edge of his shift and pulling it up, balancing on her knees and tugging him upward by the meat of his shoulders to work it all the way off. Placing a hand on his chest, she pushes him back down and slides further up, her other hand falling next to his face as she braces herself above him. “Did Skuld teach you how to do it like this?” 

And Athelstan pauses, tilting his face into the meat of her thigh and kissing it. The ease with which he does it seems to answer Lagertha’s question, and she snarls as she tangles her hand back into his hair and he’s gasping even before she jerks her wrist, sending hot needles across his scalp and to his cock. “Then I will teach you how to do it better.” 

Ragnar makes an interested noise behind them, palming the crown of Athelstan’s manhood as his thumb works over the length. “Do that again, Lagertha, his cock twitched –” 

“Be QUIETER!” Bjorn’s voice is loud and petulant, as is Ragnar’s when he responds. 

“Go somewhere else then!" 

“ _Father_ , I have _nowhere else to go._ ” 

And Athelstan begins to laugh, forgoing even embarrassment because Bjorn has _perfected_ Rollo’s snarl, and Ragnar winces even as he bites out a sharp smile, grunting and tossing himself on his side. He throws an arm over Athelstan as he does, yanking the smaller man down beside him and biting at Athelstan’s shoulder. 

“I’ll just fuck you from behind, then,” Ragnar whispers into Athelstan’s ear, admittedly quieter. 

“Yes, please,” Athelstan moans, because this, he thinks, this is something he’s wanted for a long time. Before Koli. After the first offer, but. 

Athelstan has wanted this for a long time. 

“So polite, priest,” Lagertha purrs, hitching a leg on his waist and sinking down onto his cock. “You don’t need your pretty words here.” 

Athelstan responds with a wordless rush of sound and a desperate buck of his hips, rocking into Lagertha and biting at her breast when a louder whimper threatens to break through his throat, mindful of Bjorn’s plea. Tilting his hips back carefully, he rubs his ass up against Ragnar’s cock, muscles tensing in anticipation when the head bumps and catches on the rim. 

“Priest,” Ragnar says, and Athelstan groans in frustration because that is not the sound of a voice impassioned, that is perhaps the opposite of a voice impassioned. 

And he at last understands the satisfaction of a snarl, roiling the noise in the back of his throat and having the word spit like hot meat, sizzle on his tongue when he growls “ _What_." 

“What is this?” Gentle fingers trace the marks left by self-flagellation, a few newer lines of scabs sown into Athelstan’s flesh. The tone is at a direct contrary to his touch, at once a killer’s hiss. “Who did this? I’ll _ruin_ them.” 

Athelstan moans, incapable of explaining when the head of Ragnar’s cock stands at just _barely_ breaching him, just enough for Athelstan to feel the stretch. He grabs backward at Ragnar’s hip, tossing his head as he tries to mount himself on what he feels against him. “No, you don’t understand, I did it myself, it’s fine, just –” 

Ragnar grips his hips, squeezes hard enough that Athelstan knows to still himself. “You’re right, Athelstan,” and Athelstan is lost in the softness of his voice and Ragnar said his _name_ , he doesn’t often call his priest by his name, “I don’t understand.” 

Athelstan breathes out a whimper, looking beseechingly to Lagertha, but her lips are pressed thin and she was not made happy by his explanation when she first saw the marks, either. “I – it’s a norm, where I was, it’s a form of penitence –” 

“Penitence for _what_? You’ve done nothing wrong.” Ragnar punctuates his words with two sharp thrusts of his hip, almost buried entirely in Athelstan and Athelstan cannot _breath_ for a moment or few at the stretch, at the fullness, and. 

Ragnar is inside of him, and that thought holds a heady kind of power. 

“ _Ah_ ,” Athelstan gasps, rocking back his hips and groaning, cursing, when Ragnar grips his waist and holds him still. 

“You didn’t answer me, Athelstan,” a hard thrust upward, sending Athelstan deeper into Lagertha with heat spiralling up his spine, “what –” and now he’s punctuating each word with a push of his hips, and Athelstan doesn’t think that’s a fair tactic, “are – you – atoning – for?” 

Lagertha wraps her arms around him, pressing herself close and kissing him, gyrating her hips and Athelstan groans, bites at her lips and shakes his head. 

“Priest?” Ragnar snarls, fucking hard and fast into him now. “Answer me.” A grunt is pushed next from Ragnar’s throat as Athelstan clenches down, rolling his hip back. “Priest?” 

And _oh_ , Ragnar’s hand is at Athelstan’s throat, spreading hot and wide, immobilising him and tightening, slowly. Athelstan has not forgotten – cannot forget – Uppsala, what Ragnar intended for him there, and even as his blood flares warm in his body he jerks, struggling up into Lagertha and keening wildly. Ragnar pushes himself into Athelstan’s back, hooks another arm around Athelstan’s middle and Athelstan _writhes_ , caught by the hand on his neck and the cock inside him and the cunt around him, writhes on Ragnar’s length and sobs. 

“ _Please_ , Ragnar, please please –” Athelstan knows he’s saying something, can feel sound burbling up from his throat but he can’t know what words they are. 

“ _Answer me_ , Athelstan!” Ragnar _orders_ , shunting up into Athelstan with the full force of his back behind him, grinding the smaller man between Lagertha and her husband. 

“ _Living_ , I’m sorry, I,” Athelstan babbles, retching up the small, black secret that acted as seed for the coils that pressed hunger from his stomach, sleep from his mind in gasps and broken phrases, “I didn’t mean to take her place, she was getting better and I feel it every day, what I took –” 

Ragnar’s hand tightens quick enough to cut Athelstan’s words off with a whine, and Athelstan claws at Ragnar’s arm, at Lagertha, at himself as he comes in thick, long spurts, limbs twitching through it all and mouth wide in desperate gasps that don’t make it to his lungs. When at last he’s stopped writhing, Ragnar lets go and Athelstan coughs, choking on air as Lagertha rubs his back and murmurs encouragement in his ear. 

“As I’ve said,” Ragnar says, low in his ear as he rocks into Athelstan, gentle in the last rolls of his hips till he comes, “you’ve nothing to atone for.” He sucks a mark behind Athelstan’s ear, lazy as he reaches around and finishes Lagertha off. 

Athelstan makes a mild noise of discontent at that, still – 

Lagertha kisses him, hard, bites at his tongue before she sucks on it. “Ragnar is right,” she whispers as she pulls back, pressing a few more chaste kisses on his lips. 

And Lagertha has not yet touched Ragnar and Athelstan has not yet forgotten Uppsala and Ragnar has not yet made himself worthy of them again, after what he’s done – 

_But he will get there,_ Athelstan thinks as they twine around one another to sleep. _As will I._


End file.
